Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Opting out of virtual credit card insurance payments

The issue of using a virtual credit card for insurance
payments has not only become a frustrating situation for the dental practice,
but also costs the office money they don’t need to be spending. My friend and
colleague, Jennifer Schultz, who is owner of The Virtual Dental Office Manager,
is also having the same issues with her offices. She recently wrote an article
on the same topic, CLICK HERE to read it.

When I received one of these virtual credit cards for an
insurance payment, I was like, “What the h*%# is this and how am I suppose to
post it?” Since I needed my deposit slip to balance with payments and credit
cards, I ended up posting a $0 payment to the claim and adding a note in the
claim status notes that it was a credit card payment and how much it paid on
the claim. Then I posted it as a credit card payment and also made a note in
the payment that this was an insurance payment. If it is
not critical for your office to balance the credit card total on the Dentrix
deposit slip with your credit card batch, then you could post the virtual
credit card as an electronic payment and then make a note on the claim that it
was a credit card. What a pain!

I would highly recommend you try and opt out of this method
of insurance payments because it is costing your office a merchant fee of 2-4%
of the total payment that you don’t need to be spending. This could add up to
hundreds of dollars per month of unnecessary fees for the practice.

You can opt out of this payment method by calling the
insurance company and asking to be removed from this method of payment. See if
you can opt for a direct deposit instead. After you have opted out with the
insurance company, make sure you follow up with the merchant that issued the
credit card payment to see that it was done. Hopefully by making these two
phone calls, you can avoid these virtual credit card payments in the future.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.